Disasters and Decisions
by MegalegU
Summary: "What happened?" he demanded, somehow already feeling the familiar current in his stomach demand his every attention; eyes, ears, even nose. He only ever felt that when it concerned Shawn. The next few seconds were a haze. Something like, "…Shawn…car…I wasn't…he pushed me out of the way…"


**A/N: **I've had this floating around on my computer for a while - this was a little experimenting project for me, see where I could go and stuff. My wonderful, wonderful friend **Mrs-N-Uzumaki **helped me tremendously, as always. The ending's kinda up in the air but please tell me what you think!

* * *

The tension in the room was palpable.

The father sat at one end of the table, son on the other.

Words had always been a feat for the two – they were never able to wrestle together sentences that would properly convey how they felt. So neither of them talked – just let their shared anger fester until conversation was vital.

The son spoke first, his voice holding a rasp that hadn't been there before. "You should have just let me," he began, body leaning forward with the weight of his statement.

"You need boundaries, at least once in a while." The father reprimanded, his tone that of a man that had repeated earlier sentiments like this before.

"I have boundaries. They're just further than _yours_."

"And by further, you mean throwing yourself into situations you should never have been in the first place?" the father didn't wait for a response. "Tell me again when I can stop looking out for you, making sure you don't fall on your ass at every turn."

"You don't need to look out for me! I was just fine anyway, until you came along."

"That's the worst 'thank you' I've ever heard."

"Good, because I wasn't thanking you."

The father's mouth was set into a hard line, the wrinkles that accompanied time stretching across his face more evident in the light being pilfered from behind the curtain drawn across the window.

"Look, dad…" he waited for an interruption, something to pull him out of the whirling sea around him that was his father's silence. But a reprieve didn't arrive and he was left to come up with an explanation of his own. Which he really couldn't give…considering he didn't exactly have a reason for plunging himself into yet another situation that merited that fleeting moment of oh-my-God-I-could-have-just-died-but-didn't-oh,-and-here's-good-'ol'-dad-to-scream-at-me-for-doing-my-job. "I didn't think you were going to be there…" oh, crap. Not the right answer. Not the right answer at all. He may as well have just dangled himself above a pool of swarming sharks. Nothing could top the menacing smolder of Henry Spencer's eyes and the way they bored into his son, that silent threat that held such weight Shawn could have fallen through the floor and left the impact of his chair behind for his father to scold.

"You didn't think…I would _be there_?" Henry spat, his words punctuated by the cadence of his voice that always came into play when his son was being a jackass again. "You know, you seem to forget that while you do incredibly ridiculous things, Shawn, I _am _your father and I'm concerned for your safety when you go traipsing around in abandoned warehouses that hold _Russian arms dealers_!"

"In my defense, I didn't know they were going to be Russian…"

"Did you also not know that you went, _without backup_, into the warehouse? Without Gus, even?"

"You should be relieved I didn't bring Gus with me!" Shawn exclaimed. "He probably would have given us away within the first five minutes."

"So in the next fifteen it would have been okay, since it was you that sneezed and alerted the leader?"

Shawn scowled. "I don't aspire to be allergic to dust mites, dad."

"You aspire to be a pain in my ass."

"Well, if Jules hadn't called you…"

"Detective O'Hara was one of the _only _people that had my interest ahead of yours! Shawn…you're lucky to be sitting here! You know that, right? One day, kid, you're going to do something equally as stupid as this, or God help everyone, _worse_ and you won't be able to weasel your way out of it with your smart-assed remarks and your 'psychic' spiels. One day, you will pay for your actions."

"Am I not paying for them right now by listening to this?"

Henry leveled his patented I-mean-it stare at his pseudo-psychic son.

"Okay," Shawn relented, "so maybe I wasn't thinking _that _clearly…"

Henry snorted.

"But I was doing it in the best interests of my case!"

Henry rubbed the spot between his eyebrows that always flared with a twitch of pain whenever he had to deliver a line that would bring Shawn back down to earth. "Sometimes, Shawn, your well-being is more important than the case. You're not indestructible, you know."

"I know that, dad." Shawn sighed, burying his face in his arms so his father wouldn't have to see the flash of remorse cross his features the way it often did when his senses flooded back to him.

"Well maybe you should know that before you do something so reckless."

The moments back at the warehouse pulsated through Shawn's head like the familiar beat to one of his favorite Simple Minds songs. Running. Jumping. Bullets whizzing. His father, yelling. His heartbeat, thudding in his chest. Then, falling. Relief. Looking up. His dad's eyes, concern swimming through them. "Shawn? Are you okay? Shawn, answer me!"

"Shawn!"

Shawn jumped out of his daydream. "Uh…yeah. I know. I'll…try not to pull an _Iron Man_ next time,"

Henry finally let his barriers down, just for a moment, as he saw Shawn actually considering his actions from earlier. That was just too much, honestly. It was like pouring a handful of those ridiculous Sour Skittles Shawn had roped him into buying once into his mouth – way, way too controlling of his senses. "Okay, Shawn." He said quietly. "Okay."

* * *

Henry looked at his son's unconscious form on the hospital bed, running a moment through his mind that had poked at him as he tried to concentrate on Shawn's condition – one that seemed eerily like a prelude to where he was at that time.

He didn't like to immerse himself in memories – they had a way of consuming him and blurring his focus. Which only catapulted him to another memory – of getting his son to take memories out of his attic, the colorful outfits from when Shawn was an infant nearly overflowing out of the box. At that time, Henry had convinced himself it was merely because the clothes were taking up the space that rightfully belonged to his old tackle box – but he could have done without the tackle box and he could have done without the infinitesimal fold of his son's jaunty expression when he'd demanded, "Throw that out, will you? It's just collecting dust."

Now, though, he couldn't help but uncharacteristically – for once, once in his life – berate himself for being such a fool. What he would _give _to just keep that box, keep every box of useless junk Shawn had ever made or kept hidden in the crawl spaces, for that dejected look on his son's face to go away. The way it had so clearly taken over and then flew away when he realized his emotional frailty.

Pitiful, Henry was. Making his own son feel that way. He ought to be the one in the bed, suffering.

He swiveled around to look out the window at the typical sunny Santa Barbara and turned away in disgust. He couldn't find a spot in him that found any part of the week sunny. He'd spent Monday driving like a maniac to the hospital after word about Shawn getting injured got back to him, Tuesday and Wednesday by his bedside, not once getting up to shower or even turn his eyes away from the sight and now today, letting the tsunami of memories wrap itself around him like a thick blanket – until he couldn't breathe, until he was suffocating with the knowledge that despite his best efforts, there were some things he just couldn't prevent.

For instance, the phone call.

Henry had been simply leaning back in his chair, a bowl of popcorn nestled in his lap, a cold beer on his right and Turner Classic Movies turned so loud he almost hadn't heard it.

He always kept his phone close by, just in case.

He noticed a faint glow in his periphery vision and realized he was getting a call from **Detective Carlton Lassiter**. Disgruntled at being interrupted from his relaxing Saturday night, he answered, a fraction of irritation permeating his voice, "Hello?"

"Henry." The cadence of the detective's voice had him leaning forward out of his seat, his bowl of popcorn tipping dangerously close to the floor.

"What happened?" he demanded, somehow already feeling the familiar current in his stomach demand his every attention; eyes, ears, even nose. He only ever felt that when it concerned Shawn.

The next few seconds were a haze. Something like, "…Shawn…car…I wasn't…he pushed me out of the way…"

And Henry was already racing to his truck.

He didn't want to revert back to it, but he did, and he glanced at his son again with tired eyes. He was getting really tired of telling Shawn not to do things and then watching him suffer in pain after he had. It was a pattern he was all too familiar watching himself be weaved into.

Henry stopped the onslaught of memories with a jerk of his head, caught between watching his son and staring out the window, at nothing. He wanted to do something, move around…but the taste of guilt was prominent in his mouth whenever he looked at Shawn, with his immobility.

Even more guilt-inducing were the heartfelt cards, bunches of flowers and pineapple-esque toys that dotted the table next to his son's bed. It was almost like a vigil and he again turned away from the sight. To anyone looking in, he must have appeared as if he were a mental patient, what with his rapid turnings and mutterings to himself. He knew in his heart that there were only so many places he could turn before the reality would stare him in the eye. Of course he knew that. It didn't mean he couldn't refuse to look until the last possible second. Because if he did – if he looked – it would mean admitting that this was an event he couldn't foresee. It would mean that for once, Henry Spencer, the ultimate cop-turned-detective just let something like this happen.

The whole internal monologue was starting to wear him thin so he finally just sat down and rubbed his temples.

"Henry?"

Henry turned to his right and saw Karen, arms crossed, in the doorway. Her sharp features seemed softer in the lighting, as if she too, had been affected by the events of the week. She was always the one Henry preferred to be around, honestly, in cases like these. She mostly just sat quietly and let her unspoken words just be that…unspoken.

Finally, Henry nodded his permission for her to enter and she did, softly walking across the floor to the available chair next to him.

They sat like that for a few minutes, Karen looking periodically at the elder Spencer, Henry noticing her stare but not acknowledging it.

When it seemed like the room was entirely too filled with just the beeping of Shawn's monitors, Karen spoke.

"How is he doing?" she asked, fully aware that skirting around the real topic would have been pointless with Henry.

"They still don't know…" Henry said into his button-up shirt.

"When's the last time you got any sleep?" Karen asked quietly, looking at the way the corners of his mouth sagged, as if they had drooped an inch lower with each day.

Henry said stiffly, "Doesn't matter."

"Henry…you're allowed to get some rest, you know."

Anger slid through Henry's words like a slow-building storm, creating a much larger product that _felt emotions _and _reminisced on old memories, _things he was too reluctant to admit were part of him now – had been for years, truthfully and only just uncovered themselves for the torturous human qualities they were. "See, that's the thing, Karen. I am allowed to get rest. I'm allowed to get as much rest as I want. I could sleep for the next three damn weeks!"

Karen watched, unwavering.

"But…" Henry faltered, feeling something inside him close with finality. "But I can't. The last time I did…" his gaze landed back on Shawn.

"Why don't you at least take a break," she advised, using a tone that was usually only reserved only for her child, words that soothed skinned knees and hurt feelings. "Just…go on and get some food or something, get some fresh air."

Henry seemed caught between his son and Karen, his attention being unwillingly divided between the two.

"I'll stay right here," Karen assured, looking at the mid-thirties man on the hospital bed with a sad smile. "I promise."

Henry seemed rooted to his chair for a few long moments until finally, he rose, every limb seeming to stretch, and turned towards the chief. "Five minutes," he said, his voice covered with the false bravado that was the typical Henry Spencer – demanding, specific…right.

Karen nodded.

Henry cast a few glances back at his son and his new companion before finally ducking from view.

Karen turned back to Shawn, her eyes flitting around the room like some spastic hummingbird. It was too awkward to just stand there in complete silence and it was absolutely ridiculous to talk to someone that probably couldn't even hear her anyway! Yet…she felt the unmistakable magnetic pull that Shawn always seemed to emit that had her smile when he did one of his ridiculous charades. He was childish but free-spirited enough that the usual drudges of daily police business didn't bring him down. Since, technically, he didn't have to put up with daily police business.

Karen stood up, the feeling coursing through her too much to be taken sitting down. She walked the same worn path Henry had, her heels slightly clacking with each step, an accompanying rhythm to the beeping from Shawn's machines.

"Look, Shawn…" Karen began, and then shook her head. She swung sharply, turning to his bedside to look at the menagerie of gifts that had all been brought by an SBPD officer or client at one point or another. They added a dash of color to the otherwise gray room, which should have brought comfort. Instead, it just left Karen with the empty feeling of being only able to extend her power so far.

"What you did…for Lassiter…" she continued, staring at him and his stunning pale complexion. "It was…you were…you just did something really honorable. Carlton would probably thank you if he wasn't beating himself up about it so much. That's probably why you haven't heard him around…he's off burying himself in paperwork."

She looked at him again and pictured him smirking.

"Don't get any ideas," she warned his unconscious form. "He'll never admit to it."

Karen sighed, finally relented in defeat, and sagged exhaustively into the chair beside Shawn's bed. It was a ridiculous dance she was doing, all this moving around. But how could she not be, when Shawn was so still?

She placed her elbow on the armrest and buried her cheek into her fisted hand. "McNab's stress-eating jellybeans again. He keeps saving the pineapple ones for you." She suddenly felt herself growing talkative, convinced there was a remedy to all the silence. "It's been…it's been real quiet…lately…without you…frolicking around." She chuckled at the memories of Shawn making a complete wreck of the police station, sending papers into a scattered frenzy, gluing Lassiter's stapler to his desk. She hadn't realized until Shawn came along that she'd needed something like that around and it felt too much like a goodbye to let the mental scrapbook consume her so she quickly moved onto a different topic.

The sound of the heart monitor continued to bounce repeatedly against the walls, creating a metronome. Karen found herself idly following the new beat of Shawn Spencer.

"I've…I've been following the case." Karen rubbed her eyes for a moment, letting the room around her blur out of focus. "We arrested the man…the one that was driving the vehicle when…when it…" she cleared her throat. "Anyways, it's pretty much all taken care of. O'Hara's just tying up some loose ends. Actually she's…she's been around here, too. Not as much as your father though." She smiled triumphantly, just a fraction, at the thought. "He actually responded to me a few minutes ago. I've been here before and he didn't even acknowledge me. I think…he's just a little worried about you." She wondered if it would be too clichéd of her to say, "we all have been". It was weird enough for her to talk to a coma patient, let alone fall into the role of the typical concerned-friend, one that said things like "you gave us quite a scare" and "you need to pull through this".

"To be honest…I'm…" Karen forced herself to push out the words. "I'm a little worried about you. That stunt you pulled was…irresponsible. At the risk of sounding like your father, I think it was foolish of you." She couldn't help but be cutting with her sentences. "I know that Lassiter could have been injured and you were thinking of him…but that was very foolish of you. Now you're…here…" she trailed off, eyes tracing a pattern over the small scrapes on Shawn's expression and the faint bruises that marked his arms.

She still remembered talking with O'Hara, Lassiter wandering off course to inspect something in the road, a roaring sound that had her and Juliet turning to identify the source and then Shawn hurdling himself towards the head detective, knocking him over on his side…

Karen couldn't help but feel transported to that moment and the _thump _noise of Shawn's body as the car slammed right into him. She remembered O'Hara screaming something incoherent and Lassiter, wide-eyed, as Shawn rolled across pavement and landed nearly at his feet.

Somewhere in the throes of all the panic and ambulance-demanding shouts, Carlton regained control of his motor skills and called Henry. Then came the storm.

Henry was a tumultuous being to be dealing with when his son was ever in any kind of danger. He brought answers to questions with a withering stare. It was slightly impressive and unnerving at the same time.

But the storm had died down – the harsh conditions softening – and Karen couldn't lie and say that that was a relief. No, the quiet unnerved her even more. It didn't exactly mean a white flag of surrender – it wasn't that easy to deter a Spencer – but it was something of a resignation. Henry was dwindling. Karen couldn't let that happen. Henry was the one that was angry for the whole lot of them. Karen, Juliet, Lassiter, Gus…they could all be flush with a torrent of different emotions, ones they couldn't even place, because Henry lifted the burden of being the one to clench his fists and demand answers.

Karen finally spoke again, almost jumping at her own voice. "I guess…Shawn…what I'm trying to say is…there a lot of people who…who will miss you if you don't…" she forced the continuous replay of Shawn's body bouncing back from the impact, rolling across the road out of her mind. "Wake up. So just…do that, okay? O'Hara's been biting her nails again."

And then she moved on quickly, because the weird flashes she felt were too close to an emotion she wouldn't let herself feel just yet. She talked about the station and a series of drug overdoses that had happened over the past couple of days that Lassiter was convinced were connected. She talked about the vending machine and its ridiculous demand of $2.00 for the chocolate-covered pretzels that she knew Shawn would think was an injustice. She talked until Henry was back and watching with amusement as Karen regaled Shawn with tales of the newest episodes of the soap opera show she watched. She talked and talked until there was nothing left to say and empty syllables danced around in her head, without any substance to give them so she just got up and left and watched Henry resume again his position of watchdog.

* * *

Like the past few days, the next few dragged on for Henry. He counted all the tiles on the ceiling twice and could determine there were exactly fifty-seven. The chair he'd taken to sitting in had a dent from his slumped form. Strangely, the hospital room felt more familiar than his own home, which he'd retired to only once, to grab a few changes of clothes and a magazine which he had yet to open.

Guests filtered in and out of the room with their sympathetic smiles and soft gestures. Henry felt numb as he watched them watch Shawn, the way they would a zoo animal. For all intents and purposes, Shawn could have _been _a damn zoo animal. Trapped behind a glass barrier, able to look in, never touch.

Henry had tried, just a fraction. Hand hovering above his son's arm, inches away from contact. Shawn just laid there, as he was apt to do, considering. And Henry hovered, like he always had, refusing to touch, bound by some invisible force that had him just barely grazing the surface but making his presence noticeable.

But then he'd pulled away, because it was all too, too much, Shawn getting hit by a car and then falling into a coma within two days. He couldn't force himself to feel the lifeless touch just yet.

But then there were those like Karen, who still had the kindness mannerisms but managed to be…like him, in a way, if that made sense. Karen didn't ask for anything special, nothing but the facts, which Henry had always – secretly – admired in some way. She didn't want to touch him or anything, not like the one female SBPD officer that was convinced Shawn could hear her had. Henry didn't know whether or not the myth of coma patients being able to hear people speak to them was true. He hadn't even tried, honestly.

"I'm being ridiculous." Henry spoke aloud to the still room, to the walls and windows. "You can't hear me when I'm talking right now." _Yet I'm still doing it_, he thought.

Shawn, of course, didn't respond.

Henry rubbed his weary features with one hand, hoping the simple gesture would give him some clarity. He then looked at his son and sighed. "I know…I know you think what you did was right…" he hedged, still feeling the awkward way his tone seemed louder to compensate for the lack of response. "But that was extremely foolish of you, Shawn." He couldn't help the liquid anger that coursed through his system and fueled the conversation, as if it had just been lying dormant and waiting for this moment to take control. "You…look where you are right now!" he shook his head. There were a thousand words waiting to spin out of his mouth into furious sentences that he'd kept bottled up this entire time, but there was so much he had to say and he felt like he couldn't say them fast enough. Or maybe that was the ever-present guilt that had always reared its ugly head whenever he felt like getting angry at his comatose son. In situations like these, the doctor had said, there is no one to blame. But Henry could argue with that.

His tense shoulders relaxed just a fraction and he found himself backpedaling, wishing to take back what he had just said. "I…I didn't mean that." He said. What the hell was wrong with him? Why did all these feelings have to crop up now and bombard him like the worst case he'd ever had to solve? He couldn't even identify half of what was making him say or do all of these things – it was like pulling up photos with no backstory, squinting into this blurry background that held millions of variables. This was not the time to be exploring one (former) Detective Henry Spencer.

He slapped a palm over his face in frustration. "It's just…you stress me out when you do this. When you go and do exactly the opposite of what I've asked. You don't even…think. That's the most important thing to do when you're in this business. You have to think. There's no other…no other way to operate." He spoke through the spaces between his fingers.

And again, no response.

"I'm…I'm just…I know you can't even…you probably can't even hear me." Henry mumbled. "But I…you can't just _lay there _and not listen to me. I've got to say something to you while I still can, before you interrupt me with all your half-assed comments about pineapples or whatever." His voice halted when he realized the other option. "That is…" Henry said, even softer, nearly inaudibly. "If…you wake up to actually hear me."

And then silence stole Henry's words and blanketed the room until he was left to just sit and stare and wonder.

Gus, of course, visited often.

Like Karen, he knew not to ask Henry dodging questions – the first was always, "How is he?" and the response was typically, "The same." To which then a nod was distributed and seats were taken and silence was the soundtrack.

Gus and Henry were the same in only one category, really: their concern for Shawn eclipsed pretty much everything else. They were demanding, abrupt, looking for answers. Gus was more liable to talk than Henry, though. Once in a while he would go, "Hey, remember that time when…?" and Henry would realize that he was talking to _him _and not Shawn. Though that did not mean that Gus didn't talk at all to Shawn. There were days when he talked for hours about his Central Coast routes and what he had for lunch that afternoon and there were days when he talked somberly, about some event or other and then he fell into silence with Henry. Henry watched with a kind of sick fascination – able to marvel at these two creatures that could very well have represented himself and Shawn; in that one spoke animatedly and quickly and the other just lay silent and didn't respond. He wasn't so cold as to say that his and Shawn's relationship could be molded down into just that description – hardly. They had evolved a lot more than he ever thought they would get to. But sometimes it felt like _he _was Gus, with all his stories and Shawn was…well, himself after Henry gave him a berating lecture – silent.

The next day, Henry was idly flipping through a magazine when Gus walked into the room, in his usual suit and tie, probably fresh from the office. It was approaching evening and visiting hours would be over shortly. It was the usual time that Gus dropped by to say hello.

"Hey Mr. Spencer," Gus said easily, pulling up the chair that waited in the corner for him.

Henry looked up at his son's best friend and saw the way his eyes bore hope. It was too much to watch them darken with what he had to say if asked so he just nodded his greetings.

Gus must have picked up on Henry's deflection around the topic that started their every conversation so he just nodded back and stared at Shawn, like he always did. He felt a bit uncomfortable, honestly, with the glances that Henry gave him when he thought Gus couldn't see. Like he was wondering why Shawn was in the bed, wasting away and not someone else like Gus, marveling at a human that could still walk and talk and go to work.

It felt like an hour before Henry finally spoke aloud. "I talked to him."

Gus felt like he'd just been jarred out of a daydream. "What?"

Henry turned to him. "I talked to Shawn."

_Uh…_Gus fought within himself to bring up a suitable answer. 'Great job'? 'Good for you'? 'How did it go'? None of those sounded right but then again, what do you say to a broken father whose separate piece is his son?

"You did?" Gus found himself asking.

Henry nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, I did…" suddenly, his features morphed into something else, something hardened. "He's not getting any better, Gus," he finally said, and the moment of vulnerability, the way his eyes just looked downcast, brought Gus to be extremely aware of how hard his heart was thumping against his chest, as if trying to escape and render him emotionless for what Henry was about to say next.

"The doctors told me that after a certain amount of time…" Henry exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "It's less likely for him to…wake up."

Gus, having a loose grasp on medical knowledge, could read between the lines. "You're not thinking of…?"

Henry's shoulders seemed locked in an upright position of defensiveness. "I don't really want to think about anything, actually." He said curtly.

"But are you?" Gus pressed, eyes widening. He had initially thought of it in the beginning but knew it was too insane to imagine his best friend dead. Now, though, with his fate hanging in the balance, it was either take action or watch him deteriorate further. He couldn't imagine what Henry was feeling.

Henry looked torn, then angry. "He's _my son_. No one gets to decide his fate other than me. I know what those damn doctors said. I just…I'm not making any sort of move until I know that _he _won't." he jerked his head in the direction of his son on the hospital bed.

The tension that pulled at Gus's features loosened for the moment. But then it came right back again when the thought presented itself in Gus's mind over and over again, until the only remedy would be to voice the concern. "But you've thought about it?"

"Well, who in this situation hasn't?" Henry asked crisply. "It certainly doesn't mean I'm going to _do _it. It's been a week to everyone else. To me, it's been a year. I'd wait ten if that's what it would take."

The determination that coursed through Henry's words had Gus reeling back for a moment, almost ashamed to have asked the question at all. But it was a reasonable one, he knew. He wanted to know his best friend's path – he'd outlined it before for him so many times; it was only fair he had the sense of direction.

"Me too," Gus finally seconded, his gaze shifting back to Shawn again and wondering if Henry had it all wrong, if two weeks would suddenly feel like twenty and if four would feel unbearable.

* * *

Gus's internal speculation was pulling at Henry's mind as well. At least, a variation of it. The days stretched themselves into a week and a half. Pretty soon it would be two.

He'd been approached with the 'pulling the plug' proposition that morning. Before, it had been a possibility down the road. Now, it was an alternate ending. The whole speech was peppered with "I'm so sorry" and "we'd just like you to consider your options" while the underlying declaration was simply "hope is pretty much lost at this point so why don't you just cut your losses". Henry Spencer wasn't a man easily swayed. Anyone with a single brain cell could figure that out from just an hour of being with him. So the doctors cornering him wasn't a turning point in the whole situation, it wasn't as if he went, "oh!" with the realization that his son was seriously injured. But it was something that pulled at Henry's senses and left him just numbly sitting in his chair, swimming in the flood of one single thought that seemed like an entire ocean: _there's only so much time. _

Henry himself had his son's life in the palm of his hand. How did one person look at that seriously? How did they know, without a doubt in their mind, that what their decision was, was final? Pulling the plug meant death. Shawn would be dead. Henry would be left with the visible remains for everyone to see. Could you love someone enough…to kill them?

He was staring out the picture window in his son's hospital room when Karen came in, her soft footfalls not even registering to him until she was just suddenly standing there. Henry turned towards her and wondered whose side she fell on.

"I heard what the doctors said," her voice was even quiet. It was like she was already preparing for it all.

Henry grit his teeth. "So did I. But given that I disagree with them, I've decided to ignore what they say."

"Henry…" Karen was as gentle as possible, possibly using the voice she reserved for her child. "I know you think that what you're doing is right and while I know that letting go of a child is unbearable…"

"Would you know?" Henry seethed, suddenly feeling anger flare up inside him, consume his every being. "Would you know what's it like to lose a son not once, but twice? He walks out my door, doesn't show up for another ten-odd years. Do you know what that's like, to have a connection between your own flesh and blood and yet feel entirely unattached? Then I get him back and this happens? I am not letting him go. I screwed up once before by letting him slip away."

Something must have snapped inside Karen as well, because her expression shifted and anger twice as venomous as Henry's slipped into her words like a promise. "So Shawn's going to live in a deep sleep the rest of his life?" she didn't wait for a response. "You may think I don't know a damn thing about losing a child, at that, I can agree. But don't you dare tell me that I don't know what it's like to never want anything to hurt your child, to want to keep them protected for as long as humanly possible. I have a daughter, okay, Henry? And God help the day that she even comes _close _to getting in some kind of danger. I am fully aware of wanting to protect your child with every fiber of your being. But there comes a point when you're not protecting anymore. You're holding them back. You have to let them go, Henry. We all do, one day."

Henry wasted no time retorting, "There's a difference between trading in your daughter's training wheels for a real bicycle and pulling your son off of life support. One ends in a scrapbook moment. The other? A _cemetery_."

Karen recoiled from the bitter words. Her expression morphed into shock and then recovered enough for her to say, "I would want to put my child out of her misery."

Their eyes locked onto each other for the strongest, briefest moment, one mother, one father, one with everything, one grasping what he had left. Finally, one broke – Karen – and she turned away from the former detective, eyes straight ahead, not looking at him. She walked away, just as silently as she had come in.

Henry had at first been adamant about not letting the possibility permeate his thoughts, but slowly, over the course of the next week, it planted itself like a seed, a small being barely noticeable and flourishing in time. The sleepless nights, empty conversations and dismal lighting were the seed's soil, water and sun. Give it a few more days and it would be a flower. Henry could not let that happen. He was not some hopeless parent that flung their child away the moment a negative aspect reared its ugly head. He couldn't possibly…but it hurt him, almost physically, to see the way his son lay in that bed day after day, not a change, just lying still. He wondered if he would ever wake up or if he and Shawn would age together in the same place, Henry and his son both just moving in one place.

* * *

Henry spent two days hating himself.

The day after next, he considered.

And the day after that? He threw up immediately after a daunting nightmare about houses with no structures and blurred, dancing shapes that could have been things but there were no matches in Henry's mind and the last fleeting image was his son, reaching out to him and his hand darted out but it was too late and all he was met with was air. He stood in the hospital bathroom, shaking, disgusted with himself and terrified.

* * *

Three weeks, four days, twelve hours and nine seconds after Shawn landed in his coma because of a selfless act, Henry made the decision to take him off of life support.

"Mr. Spencer if you would like to-" Dr. Clark, one of many people that had filtered in and out of Shawn's hospital room with his questions and his prodding, reminding him of the limited time window they had before Shawn's organs would be of no use, gently placed a hand on Henry's shoulder, as if that was all he would need to forge ahead.

"Give me a minute." Henry said thickly, eyes downcast. This wasn't some casual dentist appointment – something to fret over for all of five minutes before getting it over with and not having to return for another six months. This was hardly bearable – this was a gaping hole in his life, in his legacy. It wasn't something he could turn around and take back – this was no holds barred, once you commit to this, it's over, gone, forever. The magnitude of the entire situation could not be played out in the sixty seconds that it took for the doctor to turn off the machines keeping his son alive.

"We need to-"

"I SAID GIVE ME A MINUTE, GODDAMMIT!" he could be quiet through this; he could portray himself as calmly as he possibly could. But the doctor was damned if he thought that Henry wasn't going to get a moment with his son without some itching to get home before five doctor looming over him like an omnipresent cloud.

The mild-mannered doctor nodded in understanding and disappeared out of the room.

Henry watched the doctor leave and then rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger, preventing them from welling with despair. He would not let himself break, damn it.

He took a few deep breaths and sat in silence, watching the monitor play out the last few seconds of his son's beating heart. The sounds were like blows to his body.

_Beep._

A direct hit to the gut, rendering his middle useless. He clutched the railing of his son's bed for support.

_Beep._

His legs shook with the pressure, threatening to have him topple onto the floor.

_Beep. _

A faint haze swept over everything in the room, as if a tissue was placed over his eyes and all he could see were shapes.

_Beep._

But one stood out, in the dizzying delirium.

Henry reached for his son's hand, gripping onto it with both of his and held on with all his life, like an anchor; as if somehow the tighter he would hold, the tighter he would squeeze, the more likely Shawn would jar awake, as if he'd only been waiting all this time for his touch to pull him out.

Henry's hands didn't leave his son's for a long time, just holding onto this tangible version of his son, not even losing grip when tears threatened to once again cloud his sight and eventually fall free.

He gripped his son's hand even harder, knuckles turning white with determination, tilting forward in his haste to just _feel _the last few moments, stay suspended in them for days, weeks, years. He couldn't imagine the future; an empty place setting at the table on Friday nights, the still silence when watching _Shark Week, _without Shawn's snarky commentary on how they could be wasting their time better or even the smirk on Karen's face when they often passed each other at the station, like there was this shared secret between them, his son's name always dancing on the tips of their tongues. Henry didn't want to move forward because there…there _couldn't _be any progression, without Shawn.

Henry inhaled a shaking breath. This was it. Letting go. Cutting off all ties. He felt both stuck in a pocket of time that never moved and one that was constantly changing. Both sides were closing in on him and he had to make the jump. If only he had some sense of direction.

Where to go next? What had life been, before Shawn and the shenanigans that followed him? There was a time when Henry had tried to cut off ties before, when Shawn had left home – a time of sleepless nights and skipped dinners – but when he had received contact from his son for the first time in a year, he felt nothing but a sweeping sense of liquid relief that had soared through him like a necessary medication after a bout with an illness. But now…now he was going to lose him all over again. Except this time, there was no going back and mending old scars that had popped up along the way. It was finality, it was a point where you could skate backwards on memories and never go deeper. There was no receiving end, not without a son.

Henry's ears perked up as the familiar pronounced steps of Dr. Clark echoed in the room.

"We're all set," the somber voice was back again, creeping at the recesses of his mind like an incessant beat.

Henry ignored it, hands slipping out of his son's and leaned down close, breath shaking, as his lips ghosted over his son's forehead – a gentle kiss, an invisible mark that would wear on long after his son didn't.

Dr. Clark looked down at the linoleum for a moment, letting the older man share the fleeting moment with his son.

Henry withdrew himself slowly, wading through a sea of apprehension, whispering to the last living version of his son so quietly the words were almost just vibrations that buzzed at his lips like a last song, "I'm proud of you, son."

Henry was so lost in his departure that he didn't even realize he'd had a human wall of support linking around him: Detective Lassiter and Juliet, Gus and Chief Vick all stood behind him with varying expressions, as well as a few nurses, postures portraying their readiness for the inevitable. Karen sadly nodded in approval.

A nurse in sky-blue scrubs moved to turn off the heart machine but Henry grabbed her arm. It wasn't a tight grip, but it was strong enough for her to reel back. Karen looked concerned and her delicate hand floated outwards and then quickly swung back by her side, hesitant.

"Don't," Henry pleaded, feeling like he'd worked so hard just to fish out that one word. It was as if his mouth was filled with cotton and his words were getting lost in the material. There was so much else he wanted to say, so many actions he wanted to take, but the one word was all he had and he looked desperately at the nurse with the wide brown eyes like she was his last hope. Which, in all honesty, she was.

He couldn't believe that he was in this moment. A timeline of his life finally stretched down to ending another: his own son's.

The nurse next to the one in the blue scrubs slowly inched her way over to the machines and Henry watched with pleading eyes. Listening to his son's heart dying out would be agonizing but that's why he was doing it. Punishing himself for what was about to happen. Not living up to the definition he'd tacked under his name since day 1: protect and serve. And what the hell good had that done him?

One by one, the doctors and nurses turned off the machines, each click creating another flinch for Henry. He watched a nurse slowly and carefully pull the ventilator out of his son that had kept him alive for the past three weeks. Before they got to the last, before the heart of his son could stop its beat, Henry's hand shot out like a last hope.

"No! Stop!" he pleaded, worry clenching his insides until he was positive every bit of him was falling apart and the only thing to stop his peril was the familiar beat of his son's living form. "I changed my mind!" he shouted, his words wrapping around the room. "I…I changed my mind," he faltered, gaze falling on his son.

"Turn it back on!" Henry screamed. When no one moved he yelled, "Now!" his hands immediately flew to his son's. His left clutched the – thankfully – warm palm of his son's hand and his right found its way smoothing a path in his son's chocolate-brown hair. Oh, how his heart dropped and soared to feel his son again. He would never let go.

The nurses all looked to Dr. Clark, who looked at Henry, with his desperate expression and wide blue eyes and he relented, as if knowing that their efforts would only end in vain anyway. He nodded to the one in the blue and she slowly flipped back on the machines while the other two worked on the ventilator.

Something like desperation and desolation jostled within Henry for control. He clenched his eyes so tightly they started to ache, but he would not open them to look into the eyes of Juliet, Lassiter and Karen. He could hear Gus exhale a sigh of relief and the doctors and nurses moving around in the room, but if he just kept his eyes closed, he wouldn't have to leave the moment, just stay in the in-between, even if meant his son would just lay there and _be_, instead of just _be _a memory.

Eventually, he heard the doctors and nurses herding out, murmuring something along the lines of, "give him a minute" and then Karen was next to his ear and saying, "We'll be out in the hall" and Henry was blissfully left alone with his son.

He felt something give inside him, a pull that wasn't the beginning of something nor the end, but felt familiar just the same. Henry felt swooping relief at the living version of his son. Maybe he didn't have infinity, like he'd wanted before, but he had something. He volleyed between wanting to let tears fall and wanting to go for a run – to release all of the energy that had just been festering inside him until it caused the near end to release its strenuous hold. But he didn't cry – he was aware that his eyes were waging a battle with his heart – and he didn't run. He just stood and listened. Before, he'd been convinced he was deaf and that he could not understand what anyone else was saying, like voices were underwater. Now it was like every sound was vibrant and deafening. The beep of his son's heart being monitored was the most glorious melody he had ever heard.

Henry looked away for a moment out the small window where he could see one of the doctors talking with Karen and just as he let his mind wander, he thought he heard a noise crawling at the recesses of his thoughts. It was out of the ordinary, the noise. He must have imagined it, though, because it couldn't possibly be. He was wishfully thinking…wasn't he?

And then the noise broke through again.

Henry turned back to his son and nearly choked with surprise.

His son's hazel eyes were wide open and his hands were grappling for control, attempting to pull out the ventilator.

"No, Shawn, don't!" Henry reached for his son's hands and yelled through the door, "Help!" his voice carrying elation and shock and something else nameless but he didn't have time to think – his son was awake.

Dr. Clark and a nurse rushed back in and suddenly there was flurry of movement that shifted Henry's world and someone was shouting and someone else was saying, "Mr. Spencer, calm down," and he wasn't sure if they were talking to _him _or his son but it didn't matter because there was a haze over everything and he wasn't fighting it anymore.

There was another sound – Shawn coughing and Dr. Clark saying, "Easy, easy…" and then Henry was at his son's side and a variation of a familiar voice was saying, "Dad?" and Henry smiled with the widest smile he had ever felt in years stretching its way across his expression like a road that just kept on going, going and going. Maybe not into infinity…but long enough to know the end wasn't near yet.

"Son." He said quietly, reverently. And he wrapped his arms around the tangibility, the living, breathing form that was his son.

* * *

A week and three days later, Shawn was ready to be dismissed from the hospital. He sat on the edge of his bed, legs dangling awkwardly while he still wore his gown, waiting for his father to come back in the room with a change of clothes so he wouldn't show off his bare ass to the nurses on the floor. Not that that would be a huge travesty, considering the perky brunette that always gave him extra orange juice in the morning.

It was sort of relieving, honestly, being alone for a moment. Normally, he would relish the attention and gifts everyone threw at him and the "you're a real hero" speeches but after about a week straight of no one letting him breathe without assistance, he was glad to be able to just sit and think without his father looming over him, asking if he was alright.

He had actually done a lot of thinking. Hard to believe, huh? Well, between all the pineapple smoothies and reruns of 80's television shows that Gus was somehow convinced would heal him better than the medications coursing through his veins, Shawn was replaying _that moment _over and over in his mind. How he had heard the car speeding towards the head detective, how his mind had made a split second decision that had his legs racing a moment before it all registered with him and how the impact of the car had hurt tremendously, like getting punched in the gut and stabbed in the throat and breaking his leg all at once. Well, technically he had broken his leg. It still hurt all the same.

Suddenly, his father was in the doorway, folded clothes under his arm, an amused expression on his face.

Shawn looked up at him quizzically. "What?"

Henry at first looked playful but then something seemed to snatch at him and he deflated the smallest amount. "You're just…very still."

Shawn raised an eyebrow. "Well, I can't be hopping around with this broken leg." He jutted his cast-encased leg outwards and then winced, pulling it back. Henry stepped an inch closer, protectively.

"Yeah…" Henry seemed to be thinking but then turned sharply. "So…you ready to go?"

Shawn looked around him, at the dismal walls and windows, the last of the greeting cards that would be taken care of by Buzz or some other cop and then back at his father. Hell yes, he was ready to get out of there. But there was something, a very slight something, that was tugging at the corners of his mind and wouldn't let go until he voiced it. And here was the only appropriate place left, really. He was smart enough to know that he and his father would both do everything they could to dodge around what had gone down in here once they left. It was probably best to lay out all the cards before they flew away in the wind that was a father and his son's shared denial.

So he ignored his father's question and instead replied, "I, uh…I'm pretty sure I had a, uh…crazy dream while I was…" he tilted his head sideways, not exactly at the point where he could comfortably say _coma_.

"Oh yeah?" Henry shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The look on his face seemed almost…anxious. Shawn didn't have to wonder why that was. He was almost positive that what he'd heard hadn't been a _dream_. He remembered the cool touch of his father's hand, something skirting along his hair and a recipe of words that had cooked together into one beautiful sentence, "I'm proud of you, son."

He'd practically had it ingrained in him – to decipher what was reality and what was fictitious. Which was why it was so damn frustrating whenever he thought of the moment – of his father's touch, of the utterly impossible words. His father would never say or do any of those things. So they must have been fabricated, in his delirium. But they _couldn't _have been. He had felt the touch.

"You were there…" Shawn looked at his father, allowing his hazel eyes to land on blue ones. "And you were…talking to me."

A corner of Henry's mouth twitched. "I was?"

"Yeah…"

"What did I say?" Henry kept his voice leveled.

Shawn's words stalled, afraid to throw the soft-spoken sentences out in the air, where they could be easily defused. "You…were talking about me. Saying stuff about…" he stopped, unable to go any further.

Henry looked over at his son and _knew. _His son knew that he knew and he knew that his son knew. They were both challenging each other, waiting for the shoe to drop and neither man was less stubborn to just let it all go.

"I think you said…" Shawn looked up again at his dad. "I think you said that you were proud of me."

Henry felt something in his expression twitch and then desperately tried to reign it in. "Well, Shawn, I don't know, people hear a lot of crazy stuff when they're out."

A resigned expression met his faltering one. "You're right," two words that would never fall out of his son's mouth, "I must have just imagined it."

There was a pause in which neither one moved for a few moments and then Henry set his son's clothes down on the bed. "We should probably get going," he mumbled.

Shawn nodded and reached for his shirt. Henry began to walk out of the room but then abruptly stopped and turned around, his sudden movement surprising Shawn.

"Shawn?" he asked, an infinitesimal crack in his voice.

Shawn looked at him.

"Maybe…maybe I uh, did say some of that stuff." Twitch. "Maybe it all wasn't in your dreams. I don't really remember."

A small smirk, a victory. "Oh, yeah?"

Henry's hardened expression returned. "Yeah."

Shawn nodded.

* * *

Over the next few days, Shawn stayed at Henry's house and they were actually civil to each other, only one argument arising. Shawn noticed the way that Henry was delicate around him still, like he was some fragile being and for a little bit, he embraced it but eventually he began to do things on his own. They never mentioned the coma conversations ever again but Shawn could still see it, in the way that Henry's gaze averted when a topic got too emotional, how his eyes had a slight color change when it was brought up, that he'd said all those things Shawn had heard and probably more. But it was enough for the younger Spencer, to have that one small victory, the reluctant admittance:

"Maybe…maybe I uh, did say some of that stuff."

It wasn't an open declaration – reluctantly spewed forth, but it was a declaration nonetheless and sometimes when Henry spoke to Shawn, Shawn wasn't listening at all, just watching his dad and hearing those words, those clandestine sentences spoken in the most vulnerable points.

So, yeah. 'Maybe', in Shawn's opinion, could pass for a 'yes' any day.

* * *

_The end! _


End file.
